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Hi Everyone,
"AWARENESS" has been brought up on the board many, many times without much discussion on how to cultivate it. I, myself have alluded to awareness in the context of the Three A's of Self-Protection, which are:
1) Awareness
2) Assessment
3) Action-in the form of Avoidance, Escape, Dissuasion, or Preemptive Attack (and escape).

Without a doubt, THE most important skill to cultivate for self-protection is AWARENESS. Well, since I've never elaborated on awareness in any detail here on the board, I'd like to share one of my favorite methods of cultivating it for self-protection purposes.

One excellent method is "SILENT COMMENTARY." What this entails is while you're out and about, you silently acknowledge/internally verbalize your surroundings with as much detail as possible. This method has various applications, but limiting this to self-protection purposes, you would, for example, as you enter a house full of people, start looking/scanning and describing them and your surroundings with as much detail as possible. Here's an example (internally verbalizing to yourself), "A male white to my left, nothing in his hands (i.e. no weapons/potential weapons in his grasp. Look at his hands first before you do anything else), 5'10", 190 lbs, blond hair, blue eyes, mustache, crooked teeth, big nose, 23-25 years old, swastika tattoo on right inner forearm, wearing a black t-shirt, blue jeans, and white running shoes. No bulges in pockets, nothing in the waistband (again, assessing for weapons). A male black to my right, nothing in his hands (again, check these first and foremost), 6'2", 230 lbs, black hair, brown eyes, shaved head, 20-22 years old, wearing a red sweatshirt, black pants, and black leather boots. Folding knife clip (specific weapon) sticking out of his right front pocket, a spike ring (specific weapon) on his right index finger, a bulge in the rear waistband area (possible gun), etc, etc... tennis racquet (a potential improvised weapon) to my right resting against the wall, a butter knife (another improvised weapon) on the table directly in front of me, a half-full Corona beer bottle (another improvised weapon) on the right on top of the stereo cabinet (which can be an impediment), etc, etc... China cabinet (another impediment) behind me, bookcase (another impediment) on the right, black sofa (another impediment)in front of me, oak coffee table (another impediment) to my left, etc, etc...front entrance door behind me (a possible escape route), garage door to my right (another possible escape route), etc, etc..." The above example was just a sample illustration of how this exercise is applied.

Anyway, it is good to practice this as many times as practical throughout the day. You can do this anywhere, anyplace, anytime. This "mental exercise" can go a long way in developing a keen awareness of the people around you, the weapons (specific and/or improvised) that you can use or that can be used against you, the objects that can impede you, and the escape routes available to you.

You can apply this exercise with anything and everything surrounding you. For self-protection purposes, start off and master your silent commentary with people, weapons, impediments, and escape routes before you go on from there. First and foremost, cultivate your awareness with these four to the point where it becomes a second nature, unconsciously competent skill.

To reiterated, when you do this "silent commentary" exercise, you want to do so with as much detail as possible. So, besides including detailed descriptions of the people around you, you can include specific descriptions of anything/everything around you in the positions and directions they're in relative to you and your environment/surroundings.

Now, don't get overzealous with this exercise in the beginning because discouragement can set in and prevent you from fully developing this attribute. Give yourself some time. Remember, Rome wasn't built in a day. Slow and steady wins the day. So, be patient and you will cultivate a functionally high level of awareness...

When you first begin doing this exercise, it may be tedious for many of you because you will have to intently focus on what you are doing it. However, after awhile, you will cultivate the ability to do this rapidly and without much concerted effort.

Anyway, I hope the above exercise helps those of you out there looking to develop good awareness skills.

With that said, I am interested in hearing other members' methods of cultivating this most-important attribute for self-protection. I wanna learn more myself too...

Take care and God Bless...

Best Regards,
Lito

Holy s**t...that is so ******** up. I can't believe that a whole ******** class would gang up on one kid...especially when it's just some innocent guy.

That guy kimbo is from bullshido.net. Nobody is allowed to link video of his fight.

Why not? That's kinda...stupid.


I knew that people got bullied pretty often, but I never thought it would be to this degree...my school doesn't really have that much bullying. There's the occasional 'cheerleaders setting up some nerd' thing, but most of the time if you get bullied, it's either because you're really ugly, really arrogant, or really nerdy looking...meaning most times, it's very possibe to avoid being bullied.

That's so sick though...everyone sees this one kid being bullied and doesn't do anything about it? This makes me remember how my dojo talked about bullying with the kids, and it turned out a lot of them had been bullied (although I guess that makes sense, since people who get bullied tend to turn towards martial arts). It just surprised me because I thought people who got bullied would be really nerdy or arrogant, but they were great kids who were funny and responsible. And a lot of them didn't fight back...it pissed me off a lot to think that people would hurt them.

I do have a question, though...why don't they fight back? I know a black belt at my dojo who gets the crap beaten out of him every week, because he absolutely refuses to defend himself. He just stands there and lets them beat him...I just can't believe it. If I went to his school, I'd hunt those twerps down and slam their faces into a locker.